Time Under The Bar
Recently, I spoke with someone who is very healthy and fit. I asked him what his secret was to incredible fitness! His response? “Honestly Bradley, it’s just time spent under the bar. I spend more time than most people do at the gym.” But this isn’t a health and fitness post, so why do I bring it up? I think that business requires “time under the bar” too. Let’s unpack this…

Business Owners Have Natural Strengths
Most entrepreneurs are great at certain business-building skills. These often include sales, performing a sought-after service, bootstrapping everything to “get it done,” etc. If you’re naturally good at something, it takes less effort to do it well. We talk about this a lot over here at Business Growth Curator. It’s called The Rainmaker’s Dilemma, and it often traps entrepreneurs in the weeds of their businesses. (We also help owners break this cycle, and highly recommend you learn more about The Rainmaker’s Dilemma here.)

Business Owners Also Have Natural Weaknesses
When you grow your business, you begin to notice some gaps in your skills. For me, this was marketing. While the internet in general wasn’t seen as a marketing platform when I was growing my business in 2008, I quickly realized that I didn’t know much about any type of marketing. As an insurance agent, we had just one method of finding new customers – cold calling referrals. When you’re growing most businesses, you likely can’t rely on collecting and calling referrals. This is true in all the areas of business, from leadership to sales, from knowing your numbers to growing them, there are skills that you can’t pick up naturally. So how do you correct this?

Time Spent Under The Bar
It’s easy to write off your weaknesses in business. After all, you can’t be good at everything! However, I want to challenge this mindset. While you may hire experts for your team, it’s important that you have a working knowledge of all the areas in business. So this is the point of my training: You have to spend time under the bar. There is no substitute for taking the time to learn and practice a new skill. This is exactly what I thought of when my trainer friend said he simply spent more time under the bar.

Time Well Spent
It’s difficult to know how much time you should spend developing a weak area in business. I recommend working this skill into your schedule during Sunday Night Planning. You’ll be able to get a clear picture of your priorities and commitments first, and then add your “time under the bar” to the week. If you don’t have our Sunday Night Planning tool yet, you can grab it using the form below:
Ways to Spend Time Under The Bar:
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